BIOGRAPHIES GUEST SPEAKERS

Julian Rushton, Emeritus Professor of Music, University of Leeds Chairman, Musica Britannica.
He studied at Cambridge and for his doctorate at Oxford, supervised by J.A. Westrup. He taught at the University of East Anglia and subsequently at Cambridge, holding a fellowship at King´s (1974-81), before being appointed to the West Riding Chair of Music at the University of Leeds. He retired in 2005 and now lives in the Pennines near Huddersfield. Besides published work listed here, he contributed the Mozart entries for The New Grove Dictionary of Opera and he has written various articles to The New Grove and other works of reference. An active member of the musicological community, he served as President of the Royal Musical Association (1994-9), and is chairman of the Editorial Committee of Musica Britannica (since 1993). He was appointed corresponding (honorary) member of the American Musicological Society in 2000, and elected to the Direktorium of the International Musicological Society (2007).


Kenneth Montgomery began his career as conductor at the Glyndebourne Festival Opera and the English National Opera (then known as Sadler´s Wells Opera). In 1973 he was appointed musical director of the Bournemouth Sinfonietta and two years later was made musical director of Glyndebourne Touring Opera. Following his debut with the Nederlandse Opera in 1970, he quickly made a name for himself in the Netherlands and, in 1975, was appointed principal conductor of the Dutch Radio Symphony Orchestra and of the Dutch Radio Choir as well. He was artistic and musical director of Opera Northern Ireland and director of opera studies at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, where a chair in opera studies was set up in his name. Kenneth Montgomery is also a regular orchestral guest conductor with orchestras in the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. Many of his recordings have been issued on LP and CD.


Javier López Piñón, was Born in Barcelona, lives in Holland, where he graduated as stage director at the Amsterdam Theatre School. He has staged both opera and spoken theatre with the major companies and festivals in Holland and abroad (France, UK, Germany, Italy, early music festivals of Utrecht, San Antonio-Texas, Ambronay, St Petersburg a.o.) and he has collaborated with conductors like Kenneth Montgomery (a.o. Cosí fan tutte, L´Elisir d´amore and Trovatore for Opera Northern Ireland) and William Christie (M.A. Charpentier / David & Jonathas, Lully / Thésée, Campra / L´Europe Galante). Also, he is actively involved in the creation of new opera works and has staged a number of world premières of new works by young Dutch and American composers. As a specialist in 17th and 18th-century acting techniques, he gives masterclasses at the Amsterdam Drama School , the Utrecht Early Music Festival and with Dutch theatre companies. He teaches at both the New Opera Academy (the opera department of the Royal Conservatoire and the Amsterdam Conservatoire) and the Theatre School in Amsterdam. Since 1999 he has established intensive contacts with colleagues in West and South Africa. In 2005, he has directed at the Ecole Internationale de Théâtre du Bénin in Cotonou Madame Paradji, a new piece, with a libretto by José Pliya and with music by Angélique Kidjo.

James Webster, is the Goldwin Smith Professor of Music at Cornell University, Ithaca USA. He specializes in the history and theory of music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, with a particular focus on Haydn. His other interests include Mozart (especially his operas), Beethoven, Schubert, and Brahms, as well as performance practice, editorial practice, and the historiography of music; in theory he specializes in issues of musical form (including analytical methodology) and Schenkerian analysis. He was a founding editor of the journal Beethoven Forum, and was musicological consultant for the recordings of Haydn´s symphonies on original instruments, by the Academy of Ancient Music under Christopher Hogwood (Decca/L´oiseau-lyre). Prof. Webster has also held teaching appointments at Columbia and Brandeis Universities and in Germany at Freiburg and Berlin (Humboldt University). He served as President of the American Musicological Society. He is a Fellow of the ‘American Academy of Arts and Sciences´, a member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the Joseph Haydn Institute, and a member of the Board of Directors of the ‘Johannes-Brahms-Gesamtausgabe´, as well as a member of the editorial boards of the ‘Cambridge Opera Journal´ and ‘18th-Century Music´.  

Stefan Rohringer, is Professor of Music Theory at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich. He is the president of the ´Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie´ and one of the editors of the ‚Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie´. Some of his latest publications are: »Vom metaphorischen Sprechen in der musiktheoretischen Terminologie«, in: Musiktheorie, 4/2002, 291-299; »Zum Kyrie aus Josquin des Prez´ Missa L´homme armé sexti toni«, in: Ludwig Holtmeier, Michael Polth, Felix Diergarten (Hg.), Musiktheorie zwischen Historie und Systematik. 1. Kongress der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie Dresden 2001, 279-290 Artikel »Musiktheorie«, in: Sigmund Helms (Hg.), Neues Lexikon der Musikpädagogik, 2005; »Die neue alte Musiktheorie. Eine Glosse«, in: Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie 3/2006 [http://www.gmth.de/zeitschrift/artikel/0084/0084.html].

Sergio Durante followed musical studies in Padua, later in Bologna. He also followed musicological studies at the University of Bologna and at Harvard University through a Fulbright scholarship. He was Flute teacher at the Conservatorio di musica in Farrara (1979-1986), and professor of musicology at the University of Pavia (Scuola di paleografia e filologia musicale in Cremona, 1987-1991). Currently he´s professor of musicology and director of the department of Art and Music History at the University of Padua, Italy. In Padua he has occasionally offered courses to the BU Padua program for study abroad . He is also a member of the Leuven 2002 IMS Congress Programme committee and in 1998 he was a co-opted member of the ‘Zentralinstitut für Mozartforschung´ in Salzburg. Sergio Durante has done numerous lecturing activities abroad in the following Universities: London, Prague, Krakow, Freiburg im Br., Paris IV Sorbonne, Princeton, Cornell, Ottawa, ...